The vast majority of crimes committed in the United States are nonviolent property crimes — larceny-thefts such as shoplifting, vehicle thefts, and burglaries. There were nearly 8 million such crimes in 2016, a decline of 1.3% from the previous year and of 19.9% from a decade ago. Still, property crimes remain quite common — and costly. Property crimes cost Americans an estimated $15.6 billion in 2016.

Crime tends to cluster in hotspots, and the likelihood of witnessing or experiencing a crime can vary greatly among residents even of the same local area. Looking at the city with the highest property crime rate in every state demonstrates how property crime rates can vary within states and across the nation.

To find the city with the most property crime in every state, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the number of property crimes reported for every 100,000 residents in U.S. cities of 20,000 people or more. For context, there are approximately 2,500 property crimes for every 100,000 Americans in a year. Property crimes range from less than 300 offenses per 100,000 people in Ridgefield, Connecticut to more than 15,000 offenses per 100,000 people in Tukwila, Washington.

John Roman is a senior fellow at NORC, a social research institution at the University of Chicago, formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Roman explained that several conditions often come together in high property crime areas: There must be individuals motivated to commit crimes; there must be suitable targets — people who have things worth stealing; and there must be what criminologists call a lack of guardianship, basic security provisions like guards or surveillance cameras. “[P]laces that have more property crime could have any combination of those three things going against them,” he said.

]]>247thomas20 Best Events in Sports This Weekhttps://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/16/20-best-events-in-sports-this-week-3/
Fri, 16 Feb 2018 22:09:46 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=444071As the calendar moves toward late February, winter sports are in the spotlight. However, for some sports fans, thoughts are starting to turn to baseball. Pitchers and catchers have begun reporting to spring training camps: a sure sign that baseball, and spring, are not far off.

For now, though, the playoff matchups for the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League are beginning to take shape. College basketball’s regular season is drawing to a close, with conference tournaments on the horizon and the NCAA Tournament soon to follow. The winter’s biggest event, the 23rd Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, concludes on Friday.

The dramatic trade by the Cleveland Cavaliers on Feb. 8 has energized LeBron James, and Cleveland is once again a formidable force in the Eastern Conference. Cleveland has important games against Washington and San Antonio. The defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors have had their crown knocked around a bit, and they will be tested by the Los Angeles Clippers and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Old-school hockey aficionados can look forward to a matchup between two of the National Hockey League’s original six teams, when the defensive-minded Boston Bruins face off against the high-scoring Toronto Maple Leafs.

A developing college basketball rivalry will be renewed on Tobacco Road when the Syracuse Orange take on the Duke Blue Devils in Durham, North Carolina, in a key Atlantic Coast Conference battle.

If European soccer is your sport of choice, Chelsea FC will face Barcelona FC in the UEFA Champions league round of 16. Chelsea will also look to secure a crucial win against Manchester United to secure a top four spot in England and a return trip to the Champions League next year.

And before we say goodbye to the Winter Olympics, the last full week of February will be packed with events. On tap are the men’s ice hockey final and the Winter Olympics debut of events such as Olympic Snowboard – Ladies’ Big Air; Speed Skating – Men’s Mass Start; and Alpine Skiing – Alpine Team.

So pull on a parka, grab a hot chocolate, and hunker down for a winter wonderland of sports.

]]>247grantStates Where Americans Are Paying the Most Taxeshttps://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/16/states-where-americans-are-paying-the-most-taxes/
Fri, 16 Feb 2018 20:41:36 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=443940In the U.S. federalist system, each state government decides how to generate revenue — that is, which taxes to collect, and how. No state tax code is identical and, largely as a result, what the average American pays annually in taxes varies from state to state.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the tax burden of residents in each state — the portion of income that goes to state and local governments’ taxes — from the report, “Facts & Figures 2017: How Does Your State Compare?” provided by tax policy research organization Tax Foundation. These tax burdens do not include the federal taxes paid by all Americans regardless of state.

According to the report, tax burdens in the 2012 tax season were as low as 6.5% in Alaska and as high as 12.7% in New York.

In addition to federal, state, and local taxes, Americans pay taxes to other states. Out-of-state visitors pay sales taxes as tourists, investors pay capital gains taxes on investments in other states, and drivers filling up at gas stations in other states pay those states’ excise taxes. For this reason, the tax burden is not always a perfect reflection of taxes collected.

Approximately 78% of taxes Americans pay go to their own state and local governments. The variation in tax burden between states is due largely to differences in each state’s tax code. High tax states tend to collect more taxes and at higher rates.

While most states tend to collect income, property, and sales taxes among several others, not all states collect all taxes and not at the same rate. High tax burden states collect more taxes and at higher rates, while lower burden states collect less taxes and at lower rates.

For example, in the 10 highest burden states, individual income tax collections per capita in fiscal 2015 exceeded the national average of $967. By contrast, five of the 10 states with the lowest tax burden collect no income tax. Similarly, property taxes tend to exceed the national average in high burden states, while they tend to be lower in states at the other end of the tax burden spectrum.

It seems there is no shortage of reports about mass shootings and high murder rates in major U.S. cities like Chicago. Yet the overall violent crime rate in the United States is more or less unchanged, falling from 387 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to 386 incidents per 100,000 people in 2016.

According to the FBI’s definition, violent crime includes four types of offenses: rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and murder. In a country as large and diverse as the United States, nationwide figures are rarely good indicators of local trends. This is especially true in the case of crime, which tends to be highly local and varies significantly not just between states and cities, but even within neighborhoods.

Changes in violent crime fluctuated widely across the country over the past half decade. In a number of metropolitan areas, like Ames, Iowa, Muncie, Indiana, and Bend, Oregon, it improved substantially, dropping by more than 40%. In other metropolitan areas, violent crime increased substantially. In Monroe, Louisiana, the violent crime rate rose by nearly 90%.

In some states, changes in violent crime rates at the metropolitan level mirror statewide trends. In Florida, where the violent crime rate decreased by 16.5%, 15 of the 16 metropolitan areas with comparable data also reported declining violent crime rates. However, this is not always the case. In Wisconsin, the violent crime rate increased by nearly 30%, but no state metropolitan reported an increase in violent crime of more than 14%.

Reviewing changes in violent crime rates from 2011 through 2016 , 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the metropolitan statistical area in each state where violent crime increased the most.

]]>247mike100 Most Popular Musicians on Tour This Year!https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/16/100-most-popular-musicians-on-tour-in-2018/
Fri, 16 Feb 2018 17:46:34 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=443882There’s nothing like seeing your favorite artist in concert. No matter how often you listen to them at home, seeing a live show with a large crowd is a completely different experience. And this year, music lovers are in luck. A huge number of artists will be hitting the road in 2018, and fans of any music genre will be able to find at least one concert they will not want to miss. There will be rockers, rappers, pop icons, and country music legends touring across America.

24/7 Wall St. compiled a list of the 100 most popular artists touring the U.S. in 2018. We determined the most popular artists based on follower counts on live music tracking website Songkick, as well as daily Wikipedia page views.

The 100 most popular artists touring this year span a wide range of styles. Pop fans can enjoy the uptown funk of Bruno Mars, fresh off his huge Grammy success. For R&B lovers, teenager Khalid will have dozens of shows in the U.S. and abroad. The 84-year-old Willie Nelson is on the road again for 22 concerts in 2018, to the delight of country and blues admirers.

For some fans, this might be the last chance to catch your favorite artists before they hang up their microphones for good. After over 50 years on the road, Elton John announced his farewell tour. The Rocket Man will play more than 70 shows before retiring. Paul Simon will also play his final run of shows in 2018. Heavy metal fans can bang their heads one last time for Ozzy Osbourne, who announced his farewell tour earlier this month.

In order to determine the most popular musicians on tour this fall, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed artists with at least one show in the United States during 2018 who also have at least 200,000 fans tracking their tour dates on Songkick.com. Individual artists, bands, and DJs were ranked based on a weighted average of the number of fans tracking the tour dates on Songkick as well as the average daily number of visits to the act’s Wikipedia page over the past 12 months. The number of fans and Wikipedia page hits comprise 70% and 30% of the weighted average. A musician’s hometown or where a band was formed came from open source music encyclopedia Musicbrainz.org. The end of each artist’s tour also came from Songkick.

]]>247grant19 Teams That Never Make the Playoffshttps://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/15/19-teams-that-never-make-the-playoffs/
Thu, 15 Feb 2018 22:34:24 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=443620Reaching the postseason is the goal of every professional sports team, and a reward for a successful regular season. For fans, the postseason is an emotional thrill; for players, it can mean professional and monetary rewards; and for the franchises, it’s additional revenue. Yet, not all teams make it to the playoffs, and some have been in a playoff drought for years.

It has become increasingly easy for professional sports teams to make it into the playoffs. About half of the teams in the NBA and the NHL qualify for the postseason each year. Major League Baseball and the NFL have expanded playoff opportunities in recent years by adding wild-card teams to the playoffs for teams that did not win their division but won enough games to reach the postseason. Ten MLB teams qualify for the postseason and 12 professional football teams make the playoffs.

Franchises such as the New England Patriots, the Boston Celtics, and the New York Yankees get to the postseason with such regularity that it has become a given for those fans. But for some unlucky teams, the playoffs are elusive. Before snapping the drought this year, the Buffalo Bills held the longest postseason drought of any professional sports team, missing the NFL playoffs for an astonishing 17 seasons.

To identify the 19 teams with the longest playoff drought, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL franchises that have gone the most full seasons without making it to a playoff game. It has been at least five seasons since any of these 19 professional teams played in a postseason game.

]]>247harringtonHow Bad Is the Flu Season in Every State?https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/14/how-bad-is-the-flu-season-in-every-state-3/
Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:54:20 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=443575The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said during its latest reporting week that the geographic spread of influenza in every state except for Hawaii and Oregon was “widespread.”

This year’s flu season may still not have peaked and remains considerably worse than in recent years. During the first week of February, 7.7% of doctor visits nationwide were for flu or flu-like illnesses, versus the off-season average of 2.2%. This is the highest level since the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

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Fears of a flu pandemic emerged early in the United States after hospitalizations spiked at the start of this year’s flu season.

The Atlanta-based agency said in a media advisory on Feb. 9 that the hospitalization rate for the fifth week of the 2017-2018 season is 59.9 per 100,000, above the corresponding period of 50.9 for the 2014-2015 season. The overall cumulative rate is approaching the overall end-of-season hospitalization rate of 64.2 for 2014-2015, the season with the highest final cumulative rate of laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalizations.

A flu pandemic can emerge anywhere and spread globally. The flu pandemic of 1918 killed as many as 100 million people — approximately 675,000 in the United States. Three flu pandemics have occurred since then, in 1957, 1968, and in 2009, when H1N1 (also known as the swine flu) killed approximately 12,469 Americans. The most prevalent strain of this year’s flu season has been identified as H3N2.

In an email to 24/7 Wall St., spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Ian Branam said, “H3N2-predominant seasons have been associated with more severe illness especially among people older than 65 years and children.” So far this flu season, children under the age of five, 50-64 year olds, and senior citizens are the most at risk groups. People 65 and older are over four times more likely to be hospitalized with the flu than the average American.

While the current flu season is nowhere near 2009 levels, when flu cases spiked higher and earlier, the CDC is anticipating elevated influenza activity to continue for several more weeks. “This season is notable for the sheer volume of flu that is occurring in most of the country at the same time,” said Branam.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed influenza activity levels in every state using data from the influenza division of the CDC. Activity levels are as of the second week of January. Specifically, they measure the percentage of current outpatients reporting flu and flu-like illnesses compared to such reports over the past non-flu seasons. States with high activity levels are those where flu cases have exceeded the respective by the most.

2017 was a challenging year for many Americans. The well-being of the average American dropped more in 2017 than in any year since the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index began tracking it in 2008.

The Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index is based on interviews with over 160,000 U.S. adults aged 18 and older, and is intended to capture how people feel about their lives and what they experience on a daily basis. The index consists of five categories: sense of purpose, social relationships, financial security, relationship to community, and physical health.

Scores in each category vary greatly across the country. While residents in the Northeast, West, and Upper Midwest generally enjoy the highest levels of well-being in the country, the South and the Rust Belt are home to most states with the lowest well-being — and the regional divide is growing.

To determine America’s happiest and most miserable states, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed the results of the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index. Survey results from Gallup were paired with other socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI, and other sources.

]]>247evan30 Worst Superhero Movieshttps://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/13/30-worst-superhero-movies/
Tue, 13 Feb 2018 23:02:15 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=443288Hollywood has been churning out a steady stream of superhero movies over the last decade. The reason is clear: These films perform extraordinarily well at the box office, grossing millions of dollars domestically and billions abroad.

Not every movie featuring spandex-clad heroes and comic book villains results in box office gold, however. 24/7 Wall St. has determined the 30 worst superhero movies by creating an index based on user ratings from the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes. Even if they were crafted in pursuit of critical success, these films have become the equivalent of studio kryptonite.

The superhero movies created in the last decade have generally been commercially successful. For example, seven of the 25 highest-earning films of all time – ranked by worldwide gross – are superhero movies, and every one of them was produced in the last seven years. These films generally have extraordinary budgets, access to technology that was not available in the past, and appeal to markets across the world. By contrast, of the 30 worst superhero films, just four debuted then, while 12 of them hail from the 1990s and five from the 1980s.

While some films on our list of this genre’s worst revolved around stalwarts – witness “Superman III,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III” and “Batman & Robin” – many more trot out lesser-known characters, who have failed to capture audiences’ imaginations. Such titles include “The Shadow,” “The Phantom” and “Steel,” which stars none other than NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal.

In addition to drawing dismal reviews from critics and the public at large, many of the films on our list performed exceptionally poorly at the box office. “Steel” grossed less than $2 million in the U.S. “Blankman,” the film on our list with the second-lowest gross, collected only $7.9 million domestically. Some of the higher-earners have been virtual flops in domestic box office: Director M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” grossed just a tad more than $131 million in the U.S., a meager haul considering its $150 million budget, per IMDb figures. It did earn the rest of its production budget back on the global market, however.

To be considered for this ranking, a film had to have picked up at least 10,000 user ratings combined from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes and 10 Tomatometer critic reviews along with an action classification from IMDb. Our index tallied an average for each film using its average audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and average user rating on the Internet Movie Database, all weighted by the number of votes. We then averaged the combined user score with the film’s Rotten Tomatoes’ average critic rating. The box office data, taken from IMDb, has not been adjusted for inflation.

]]>247steven30 Best Superhero Movieshttps://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/13/30-best-superhero-movies/
Tue, 13 Feb 2018 23:01:59 +0000http://247wallst.com/?p=443286The popularity of superhero movies shows no signs of abating, as the current anticipation over the release of Marvel’s “Black Panther” movie illustrates. Furthermore, as shown by critics’ advance praise for the film, the genre has become downright respectable.

While superhero movies are now released with unprecedented frequency, entries to the genre have been released for decades. 24/7 Wall St. has determined the 30 best superhero movies of all time by creating an index based on user ratings from the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes.

With the arrival of so many of these films in recent years, it is perhaps not surprising that two-thirds of the movies on this list came out in 2010 or later. Six of these debuted in 2017: “Logan,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Wonder Woman,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and “The LEGO Batman Movie.”

Superhero movies don’t have to be new to be good, however. This list also includes classic films such as 1978’s “Superman,” which stars Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder.

Unfortunately for any moviegoers who might wish for the spate of films featuring caped crusaders and other avengers to dissipate, that is unlikely. There’s simply too much money to be madet. Seven of the 25 highest-grossing films ever made are superhero movies. Only three of the films on our list failed to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office. Two of the movies – “The Dark Knight” and “The Avengers” – grossed more than $500 million apiece in the U.S. alone.

Studios are also cashing in on sequels. This list of 30 movies includes five X-Men titles, four Batman films and four Iron Man flicks, including “The Avengers” titles.

Studios are eager to hire the directors expected to deliver box office gold. Christopher Nolan’s Batman films were huge successes; all three appear on this list. Other directors with multiple superhero wins include Joss Whedon, Bryan Singer, and James Gunn.

To be considered for this ranking, a film had to have attracted a total of at least 10,000 user ratings from either IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, 10 Tomatometer critic reviews and an action classification from IMDb. Our index tallied an average for each film using its average audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and average user rating on Internet Movie Database, all weighted by the number of votes. We then averaged the combined user rating with the film’s Rotten Tomatoes’ average critic rating. The box office data, taken from IMDb, has not been adjusted for inflation over the years.